run amok

Small town pride

My parents moved around a lot when I was a kid. My dad was in the sugar industry so more often than not we'd end up in small towns. I was only a baby, so I don't remember the first lot, but I sure as hell remember the second. We finally settled when I was 5 in a house in Brisbane. Well, Daisy Hill. Ironically enough, it was named after a prostitute who lived in the area when it was first settled. So there on our hooker hill we stayed for 8 years, until my dad's company wanted to move his position to Sydney. None of us wanted to move again so we all decided he should get another job in Brisbane. So he did. Six months later, the company went bankrupt and he had a mortgage, a wife and two kids. So, he took the first job he could find; an accountants position at Mackay Sugar, 1000km from everything I called home. A week later we were on a plane, and that was that. I spent the next six and a half years in that place. And they were six and a half very long years.

The weight of it all didn't really sink in at first. I knew things were different, but I didn't understand how different. I didn't know it yet, but in the next two years, everything that I knew about myself, my life, and the world was going to be slowly broken down into nothing and built up again from the ashes like a phoenix. Hmm. The phoenix simile is a bit tacky isn't it. Anyway, moving right along. I didn't understand how people could be so violent, so cruel, so intolerant, so closed-minded, so fucking stupid. Why the hell would you beat the shit out of someone for looking at you, or randomly attack someone because their skin is a different colour? It made no sense that different was bad here, and I was different. I played different sports, I listened to different music, I wore different clothes, so I was in for it. And oh boy, did I get it.

It took two years for me to snap. Two years of violence, abuse, and being threatened in the street. Two very long years. I don't really know what happened, something in my brain just broke one day, and wasn't going to take it. I'll never forget that day. I was walking along and two people grabbed me from behind, and threw me into the middle of a circle of others. I was hit from behind, and I ran into something metal. I was scared but I didn't know what to do. Then I felt a rope slide around my neck. It was at this exact moment that everything changed, and in some ways, this moment has been responsible for most of the rest of my life. In this moment, action against all odds no longer seemed unreasonable and it became my sole focus. I was ready for anything. I grabbed the rope, threw it away, and headbutted the nearest person. I kicked, punched, scratched, and bit in a wild fury of rage against everything that had been eating away at what was once a lost innocent kid. It was berzerk. It was far from graceful, let's not kid ourselves here. I have no idea how I even got out, but I did, and I ran, crying, away from it all, confused as to what had just happened, but for the first time the contempt that I felt for this small town felt sated, and it was good.

Over the next four years I would stand up and fight back, refusing to be a victim of prejudice and hate. I'd still get beaten down, but I would never submit again. By the end of the fourth year I'd taken up Muay Thai, boxing, and hand to hand weapons, and would later furrow briefly into Tae Kwon Do and Karate. Eventually, after I moved to Brisbane, I took up Hung Suen Wing Chun Kung Fu, and I've never looked back. Sometimes I'm unsure whether they dragged me down to their level, forcing me to adopt and acquaint myself with the use of violence, but I think I was forced to elevate myself above it by using violence responsibly. I will say one thing though, it forced me to fight back, and to fight for what I believed in, even if that was just that I had the right to be safe on the streets, and to never submit to anything I knew was wrong. Run amok.